Brown Sugar Meatloaf

This Brown Sugar Meatloaf recipe is the best meatloaf ever! It is even better than Mom’s meatloaf with its brown sugar, onion soup mix, Worcestershire and hot sauce!

This Brown Sugar Meatloaf is the epitome of comfort food. It brings back childhood memories of the family dinners that either my Mom or Dad would make. We saw meatloaf fairly often, probably every other week.

While most people rave about their Mom’s meatloaf, my Mom’s meatloaf was not the one we looked forward to. It was Dad’s meatloaf that all us kids loved, why? Because his meatloaf had way more flavor.

I wish I could say that this was his recipe. However, I never learned my Dad’s recipe. He usually ran us kids out of the kitchen when he was cooking. However, I made this recipe and it does remind me of my Dad’s meatloaf recipe from my childhood.

How To Make Brown Sugar Meatloaf

Unlike many meatloaf recipes of decades ago, this meatloaf has loads of flavor.

To make the sauce, in a small bowl, stir together ketchup, brown sugar, Worcestershire, mustard and hot sauce! If you don’t want it hot, you can leave out the hot sauce.

Mold the meatloaf mixture into a loaf and put into a loaf pan or baking dish. Brush the sauce on top of the meatloaf.

How Long To Cook Meatloaf

Bake in a preheated 350-degree F oven for 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes or until juices run clear and the meatloaf reaches an internal temperature of 170 degrees.

Tips For Perfect Meatloaf

One of the most important tips is to buy good quality, high-fat ground beef for meatloaf. Leaner ground beef will make the meatloaf drier. I recommend using an 85/15 or 80/20 ground beef, meaning that the ground beef has at least 15% fat to 85% lean meat.

Add the onion soup mix for a big savory flavor boost to the meatloaf. However, if you use onion soup mix, I would recommend limiting any other added salt to the meat because the onion soup mix has quite a bit of salt.

Don’t overmix the meat mixture. Why? Because overmixing will make the meatloaf dense.